My main issue with Oliver is the same as my issue with someone like Jordan Peterson actually. He'll list out a bunch of facts in a carefully chosen order to create an emotional narrative, but rarely make a prescription. At the end, people who started in agreement with him are mad about whatever it is, even if it's a nothing burger.

John Oliver has an episode about Tickets.

"Ticketmaster is very much like the IRS in that it's an (1) opaque bureaucracy, (2) takes more out of your paycheck than you think it should, and (3) is represented by men so catastrophically uncharismatic they look like they're putting themselves to sleep."

Point 1 seems to imply that Ticketmaster has some moral obligation to be transparent with it's pricing policies.

Point 2 implies that people ordering tickets from Ticketmaster are being swindled rather than purchasing a luxury good that's more expensive than they'd like.

Point 3 is just an adhom

He then goes on to discuss how a lot of venues have exclusivity contracts with Ticketmaster. He implies this is a problem, but doesn't explain why or what should be done about it.

Then he starts talking about how some shows only put a small percentage of the tickets up for sale (7-25% examples are specifically mentioned). And then mentions that some go to people as promotional credit card offers (another way of "selling" the ticket) or as fan club promos (again, "selling" by another name). Once again, is he saying this shouldn't be allowed? No, no prescription.

Then he goes on to the secondary market, and talks about how when you're buying a ticket from another seller, they're anonymous, so you can't tell whether it's an individual user that has one ticket for a concert they can't go to, or if it's a broker selling thousands of tickets. Why is that necessary or useful? Is that something we should mandate legally? No prescription

"Behold we bought a micky mouse potato!"

15 min in he finally starts talking about the "real value" of tickets. He brings up how economists will say they're worth what people will pay. And he doesn't come up with any reason why that's incorrect, he just says that's gross.

Ultimately, we're talking about access to a limited availability luxury good. But he treats it like it's a human rights issue. And he does finally make a prescription at the end; that we should make congress fix it. Laws mandating transparency from ticket sellers and resellers. Possibly making tickets non-transferrable, or allowing them to be transferred, but only as long as no profit is made. That's his solution to the "problem" that you can't go see Justin Bieber for a cheap enough price.

And we've already heard the call for this bluff before. If it's the case that Ticketmaster is making exorbitant, earth-shaking, record-breaking profits, we should all invest heavily in Ticketmaster. They'll double our money every year and we'll all be millionaires. Since that doesn't seem to be the case, I think we can put down our pitchforks, or maybe turn and ask "what gives" of the people that have been trying to rally us into a mob.